smith n - blind man's buff, or hamnett's philosophical individualism in search of gentrification

8/14/2019 Smith N - Blind Man's Buff, Or Hamnett's Philosophical Individualism in Search of Gentrification

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Blind Man's Buff, or Hamnett's Philosophical Individualism in Search of GentrificationAuthor(s): Neil SmithSource: Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, New Series, Vol. 17, No. 1 (1992),pp. 110-115Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of The Royal Geographical Society (with the

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Commentary

B l i n d m a n s b u f f o r H am net t s philosophic lindividu lism i n s e a r c h o gentrific tionNEIL SMITHProfessor f Geography,Departmentf Geography,RutgersUniversity,New Brunswick, J08903, USARevisedMS received 4 October, 991

What is useful for politicalintervention s to keepquestionsof collectiveagency rightin frontof one'snose,and to be verycarefulo realize hat what makescollective agency possible is rational, establisheddiscourse.Gayatri pivak'

As a Scottish undergraduatefrom a small town inthe mid 1970s, Iwas pliedwith urban anduse modelsinwhichhalf of the idealcity seemed to be submergedunder LakeMichigan.NaturallyIwas sceptical.Uponcoming to the United States my scepticism provedwell founded, for in no city I visited did I find theeastern sector submerged, and in no city either didPark's and Burgess's concentric rings apply to thewestern sector occupied by land lubbers.I did how-ever come across the quite novel process of gentrifi-cation and began researchingit in PhiladelphiaandBaltimore, ntrigued by the realizationthat this wasnot at all what the models predicted. With theenthusiasm of a second year graduate student, Ithought to theorize what I was looking at, and aftermany late nights and a very furrowed brow, I gavebirth to a short paperwith a tentative title: 'Towarda Theory of Gentrification'.Long after it was dis-patched to an interestededitor,my advisor deliveredhis own verdict on the paper: It'sOK', he muttered,'but it's so simple. Everybody knows that'. So muchfor nurturing one's students. Today I am certainlygratified that the hypothesis of a rent gap has beentaken seriously and empirically tested by variouscolleagues, but I have always suspected that my ad-visor was not entirelywrong about its simplicityandmodesty.In its content no less thanits title, ChrisHamnett's'The BlindMen and the Elephant'was a disappoint-

ingly stale intervention in ongoing gentrificationdebates.2A roguish stomp through recentand not sorecent writing, it is more likely to flatten the terrainthan elevate the debate. His centralargumentis thatdiscussions of gentrification have entertained 'twomaincompeting sets of explanations.The first... hasstressed the production of urban space', the second'the production of gentrifiers' (p. 175). Myself andDavid Leyareidentifiedas the respective proponentsof these positions - the blindmen - while Chrisplaysintellectualclean-up,clearinga spacefor the perennialmiddle ground. My disappointment stems not justfrom the lack of anything new being said, but fromthe fact that I had discussed the paper extensivelywith Chris and I thought we had ironed out a lotof misunderstandings. On reading the publishedversion,however, I findthat too muchinaccuracyhassurvived and his ideological assertionshave becometoo brittle for the paper to pass without comment.We areleft, I suspect,more muddledthanmiddled.I have several objections to the way Hamnettposes the debate and to the way his analysis pro-ceeds. First,although David Ley and I have certainlydiffered over explanations of gentrification and Iexpect still do, there is also a lot about which weagree - for example about the centrality of class inany explanationof gentrification.Hamnett'sdualisticdepiction of the debate is much too simplistic. Itexcludes the very significantcontributions of manyother writers and perspectives, a point highlightedby the fact that Hamnett's piece was followed byLiz Bondi's much more useful, original, and criticalreassessment of gender and gentrification.3Second,the discussion is very dated. It addresses the farcruder state of debate almost ten years ago andignores or misconstrues the evolution of different

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Inattempting to combat the taken-for-grantednessof demand-based explanations, I accept that I mayhave bent the stick back too far. I emphasizedproduction-side explanations and de-emphasizedconsumption-side explanations in order to make apoint, and recent research has evolved toward anintegration of supply and demand, production andconsumption. Although I would not want to speakfor him, I sense that David Ley has made a corollaryevolution, takingeconomic andhousing marketargu-ments more seriously,6but this too is not reflected inHamnett'sdiscussion.Part of my disappointmentliesin the fact that Hamnett chose to treat this evolutionof ideas as some sort of failurerather than perhapsastrength.He roots himself not in my recent work butin a twelve-year old article, and, in fact, he wants itboth ways: he wants to set me up as a doctrinaire'Marxist' (p. 174, 175, 181, 184, passim) -but onewho changes his mind too much. I am supposed tobe 'economistic and deterministic' (p. 180), andunwilling to accept 'thatindividuals have any signifi-cant role in shaping their environment' (p. 185).Meanwhile any evolution inmy thinking s trivializedas an opportunistic 'concession' to the truth, or'retreat' romerror(pp. 183, 184, passim).Thepoint isnot simply that such a depiction is unsympathetic,unhelpful and geared to perpetuate rather thandissolve false dichotomies and wrongful misunder-standings from the past; rather it indulges a naivescientistic realism such that 'the truth' about thecauses of gentrification is out there, the scientist'sdepiction of the process is therefore either right orwrong, and nothing so weak as changing one's mindis permitted. Worse, Hamnett indulges a quiteanti-intellectualreductionism,rampantin the 1980s,that invites people to see marxism, economism,determinism,structuralist-functionalism nd a host ofother isms as happily interchangeablecategories. Themere whiff of one implies the presence of them all,and probably a lot worse besides. I would like tothink that we have got beyond such opportunistic,knee-jerkanti-marxism,but that may reflectmy ownoptimisticchoice abouthow to be and to move in theworld.

Thus the quote from Eric Clark'ssuperb, criticalstudy of the rent gap in Malmo, would have beenmore appropriateat the beginning than at the end ofHamnett's article. Clarkasked that we stop posing'the one-dimensional question' concerning whichtheory of gentrification is true, and explore insteadthe complementarity of theories vis-a-vis empiricalevidence.7 I agree. Had Hamnett begun rather than

positions since then. Except ideologically it does notadd significantly to Hamnett's 1984 assessment- anarticle from which I learned substantially,especiallyhis insistence that my earlywork conflated too manydifferent processes under 'consumer demand'.4If taken uncritically, Hamnett's new foray for themiddle ground is likely to retardratherthan advanceour comprehension.This is because, third,the articleoperatesat two different evels: itpurportsto explorea middle ground between supposed polar opposites,but offers nothing new at all on the integration ofproduction-side and consumption-side explanations;and yet what is new, is a ratherextreme ontologicalindividualism that may correspond to a certainpolitical agenda, but which helps very little inunderstanding gentrification as a socio-spatialphenomenon.I shallexplaineach of these objections,but so as todiminish any future misunderstandings,and to tryand re-establish a ground for critical discussion, Ishouldemphasizetoo that there is much in Hamnett'sarticlewith which Iagree.I have few quibbleswith hisunusually painstaking presentation of Ley's and myearly work in the first six pages, or the generousconclusion that while David Ley and I may not 'haverecognized the elephant of gentrificationat first',we'each identified a key part of its anatomy' (p. 188).And he is absolutely correct that my understandingof gentrificationhas evolved over a decade and a half.I have tried to emphasize that I have learned froma number of researchers including and perhapsespecially Hamnett himself, but also David Ley andother critics, and that much of the evolution in mythinking has had to do with the intricacies of theconnections between productionandconsumptionasthey relate to gentrification.The original 1979 articlewhich occupies so much of Hamnett'sconcern today,was deliberately aimed at the near total dominationof the gentrification discourse by a neo-classicalapproach which quite unselfconsciously privileged,to the exclusion of any other perspective, demand asthe dynamo of urbanchange. The white, rulingclass,male head of household was the unacknowledgedagent in this model. Chris Hamnett along with PeterWilliamsconstituted the most outspoken oppositionto this neo-classical ideology in the 1970s, and theyprovided the most articulate research showing theway in which individual,family,household and com-munity opportunities and preferences as regardshousing consumption were socially structured byfinance capital and state intervention. Their workinformed and affirmedmy own earliestwork.5

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ended with this quote and taken it seriously, thearticle would have been a lot shorter and it mighthave brokennew ground. Not only would Ley and Inot have been set up as such one-dimensionaloppo-nents, but he might also have recognized as serious,authors' own modest claims for their work, therebyavoiding embarrassing straw arguments. Thus acentral tenet of Hamnett's article, repeated at leastthree times, was that while 'the rent gap may benecessary for gentrification to occur, it is notsufficient' (pp. 180-81). But this is the flimsiest ofstrawarguments.The only ones claimingthe rentgapto be a sufficientand exclusive explanationof gentri-fication, in fact, seem to have been its critics. It wasnever a claim of my original article;Hamnett madethe point in 1984; I have reiterated it on numerousoccasions, and in 1987 I argued- partly in responseto Hamnett's own criticisms that 'the rent gapanalysis' is 'not ... in itself a definitive or completeexplanation' of gentrification.8So once again myresponse to Hamnett'smajorargumentabout neces-sity and sufficiency is: 'right on'. I confess again: Ido not now believe, nor have I ever believed, thatthe rent gap is the only and sufficientexplanation ofgentrification.I just remainpuzzled about why thisshould be news in the 1990s.

Thus far I have emphasized the spuriousness ofHamnett'sargument,and if this had been all that wasinvolved I would have resisted any urge to respond.But Hamnett does make one highly significant ad-dition to the literature hatshouldnot become buried.He provides the most explicit and most polemicalassertion of philosophical individualism vis-a-visgentrification,and the ideological implicationsof thisargumentneed to be clarified.The argument is prefaced with a rehearsalof de-clamatory caricatures: In Smith's thesis', he claims,'individualgentrifiers are merely the passive hand-maidens of capital'srequirements' Hamnett,p. 179).The substanceand the gendering of this argumentareequallydubiousand entirelyHamnett's.To make thesuggestion stick he simply dismisses my argumentfrom the 1979 paper that 'individual gentrifiers'comprise one of three major categories of agentsresponsible for gentrification.Among those agents,and distinct from professional developers and land-lords,I argued,are'occupierdevelopers who buy andredevelop property and inhabitit aftercompletion'.9Hamnett thinkshe detects here a contorted 'circum-vention' of the involvement of 'individuals' n gentri-fication and a weak 'concession' on my part to the'awkward ntrusion'of suchindividuals(p. 180),but it

is Hamnett who has grasped the wrong end of hismammal'sanatomy this time. The recognition of theinvolvement of individuals is really quite straight-forward. The category of 'occupier developer' wasdeliberatelyintended to highlight gentrifiers'roles asactive agents in transformingas well as consumingthe built environment. Indeed the impulses toproduce and to consume are more inextricablyinter-twined in the actions of occupier developers thanamong those who only produce(e.g. builders)or whoonly consume (e.g. homebuyers) gentrifiedhousing.Occupier developers might even be seen as the 'truegentrifiers'whose consumerpreferenceis actualizedin bricks and mortar. It is difficult to think of amore integrated conception of consumption andproductionthanthis.Hamnett'sown answerto the dualism of consump-tion and production is to focus on the 'productionof gentrifiers'.Thus 'if gentrification theory has acentrepiece',he asserts,'it must rest on the conditionsfor the production of potential gentrifiers' (p. 187),those individuals whose 'motive for gentrification'leads to specific'locationalpreferences, ifestyles andconsumption' (p. 185). Developed most by BobBeauregardas part of a larger argument about classand social structure, his notion of the production ofgentrifiers was first proposed by Damaris Rose inconnection with the contradictory roles of womenas both victims and agents of gentrification.10In Hamnett's hands it is stripped of any socialgendering - indeed the importance of gender vis-a-vis gentrificationseems quite absent from Hamnett'svision - and the notion of the production of gentri-fiers is assimilated into the pole defined by DavidLey's work. This is especially problematic becauseLey has not been concerned with the production ofindividual gentrifiers per se so much as with therestructuringof class relationships n 'post-industrial'society, accompanying cultural and political shifts,and the increasing importance of these shifts inconfiguring the urban landscape. He has retaineda perspective on collective social action whichHamnett entirely disavows in favour of individualpreferences.But this 'solution' does little more thanreassertthe same dualism.Hamnett's 'gentrifiers'- a term I have triedvigorously to resist because it invites too simplisticastereotyping - come across as white, middle class,male consumers, in short a remakeof the heroes ofneo-classical theory. He himself takes considerablepains to point out that they may be 'produced' hepresumablyrefersto socialreproductionhere- butas

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any production-based explanation since, he says, agradual 'infiltration of gentrifiers ... preceded anylarge scale development'. Where these gentrifierssecured previously scarcemortgages is never asked,because the question is assumed irrelevant. Muntrejectsthe rentgap explicitly on the basisof Batterseainformants' claims to have migrated because of a'preference' orcomparatively cheap housing. 1Quitehow such inner city housing became cheap andavailable there and then, if not via the rent gap, isassumed away as a research question, and with itany sense that vaunted consumer preferences mightbe tempered at all by patterns of investment anddisinvestment.

Increasingly evident in the urban literature is aconservative return to a naive assumption ofconsumer-preferenceas a hegemonic explanation ofurban landscapes. This may involve a simpleretrenchment oward the neo-classicalparadigmor itmay accompanya gathering idealismin social theorythatprivileges individual constructions'of the world.In gentrification circles, it is often just taken forgranted, as Hamnett (p. 180) does, that an expla-nation of why people choose to live in the city issynonymous with an explanationof gentrification.Inthis assumed homology of the individual and thesocial, the unmediated translation of individualchoice into social result, and the erasure of sociallystructured and constructed choices - in this hiatus,pregnantwith assumptions,lies the root of individu-alism as an ideology (as opposed to the self-evidentrecognition of individualsas actors and choosers). Itrests on a naive realism:while it is easy to see peoplemoving from one place to another and perhapstemptingto see suchmovement as the cause of aggre-gate social events such as gentrification, it is muchharderto 'see' people moving capitalfrom one placeto anotherand to assess theirimplications.There is noreason to assume hatcausalityinheresonly in what ismost visible.

Despite thisreassertionof a conservative individu-alism, issues of preference and consumption choiceare too often closed off frominvestigation, lurkingasa kind of blackbox behindthe explanation.As Wardesays 'accounts of gentrification depend too muchupon implicit assumptions about the nature ofconsumption practices' due to 'the absence of anacceptable, articulated theory of consumption'.'2Caulfieldat least begins to open up this blackbox ofconsumptionpreferences,findingthe cause of gentri-fication in 'middle class desire'. He explicitly con-structs the 'gentrifier' again white, male and middle

his dismissal of 'occupier developers' makes clearthese 'gentrifiers'are not allowed to be producers.This is precisely the point. Talk of 'occupier devel-opers'lets the cat out of the bag thatgentrifierscannolonger be posited as pureconsumers.It is very revealing that no-one seems to haveconceived producers of gentrified properties-builders, property owners, estate agents, localgovernments, banks and building societies - as'gentrifiers'. n a quite selective and ideological way,the term 'gentrifiers' s generally reserved for thosemiddle class individuals ndowed with identities and

consumption preferences and definitively distancedfromproductionin the builtenvironment. The label isnever extended to other kinds of individualsrespon-sible for the actual physical transformationof urbanlandscapes. The preferences of these agents in thegentrificationprocess, whether oriented toward indi-vidual or productive consumption, whether gearedtoward lifestyle or profit, are thoroughly erased in aregressively narrow redefinition of housing con-sumption. Indeed, with the exception of preciselythose occupier developers disallowed by Hamnett,most 'gentrifiers'do very little gentrifying; at bestthey move into a housing stock already transformedfor gentrifiedconsumption.Such an arbitrary f ideo-logically motivated separation of consumers fromproducerssurely renders 'gentrifiers' if not gentrifi-cation)a chaotic concept.Hamnett's argument is significant for the un-precedented starkness with which a philosophicalindividualism s asserted. The 'key actors in the gen-trification process have been individual gentrifiersthemselves', he concludes.Gone here is any pretenceof mappingthe putative middlegroundbetween pro-duction and consumption and, probably more im-portant, any pretence that agency is anything otherthan individual.The collective social construction ofagency is deliberately rejected as 'individuals' arestrippedof any social encumbrance(p. 179). In thesenot so new conservative times, it is especially dis-appointing to see one of the earlier mavericks ofalternative modes of explanation acceding so readilyto such a one-sided and comfortable orthodoxy.As many of the old new left move right, a lot ofconservative shibboleths are redressed as new dis-coveries, and the sanctity of individualmiddle classconsumption is one of them.Hamnett'sdualisticindividualismcumdismissalofthe role of capital n fashioningurbanlandscapesmaybe extreme but it is not unfashionable. na case studyof Battersea,for example, Munt rejects out of hand

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class)as a postmoder folk hero struggling to expresshis fragmentedself in a cruelworld.'3Warde is morethoughtfulabout the realneed to explore questionsofconsumption, indeed he seeks a consumption-oriented explanation of gentrification but not as asimplisticalternativeto production-basedarguments.This will require,he argues, a closer investigationof consumption vis-a-vis gentrification especiallywomen's consumption- but he is strangely circum-spect about the connection between classand specificconsumption patterns.It is not just that Hamnett has gone back so radi-cally on what he once held true. That is no sin even ifhe would hold it against me as such.Itmight even berevealing to reflect on the reasons for the transform-ation fromthe 'young Hamnett' to the 'old Hamnett',as it were. Inany case, the philosophical ndividualismhe proposes is untenable,and transparentlyso whenit is levered into place over preposterousontologicalclaims, such that I hold that 'individualsare totallydetermined in their choices' (p. 179). Such an onto-logical discussion of whether individuals are'determined'or 'free' n their choices is a pathetic redherring. Suffice it to say that I obviously have nopower to 'determine'ChrisHamnett's choices in life,'totally' or otherwise, but I do feel confident inpredictingthathe will makea perfectly free choice toreply to this commentary.I would love to be proven wrong. I would love tolive in a world where people got what they wanted,what they prefered,what they demanded, but fromwhere Istand thatis a myth. Hamnettmay scoffat thenotion in favour of some essentialist insistence onindividual preference (p. 179), but I do think it asensible and workable idea, as I stated twelve yearsago, that housing and other preferencesare sociallyand collectivelyconstructed and expressed by realsocial individuals. What this means in practice, ofcourse,is much more difficult o say and the subjectofa much wider literature.14My own recent work hasfocused, as Hamnett knows but has chosen not todiscuss,on the intertwiningof culture,economics andpolitics in New York's Lower East Side where it hasbeen possible to map an economic 'gentrificationfrontier'sweeping through the areaas the realestateand the culture ndustriesgentrifiedthe areahand-in-hand. Many artists, squatters,political activists andhomeless people 'chose' to live in this comparativelyinexpensive area along with longer term workingclass residents and an increasing number of middleclassprofessionals.By 1988 the areabecamethe focusof the most significantanti-gentrification truggles in

the United States, and a massive police riot aroundTompkins Square Park. Understanding the class,gender and racial construction of these events isnot much helped by reciting litanies of consumerpreference.

Gentrification is a collective social phenomenon,integrally connected to the social, economic andpolitical restructuringof cities in recent decades. Iwould argue that for understanding gentrification,the 'entry point'-to use the non-essentialist lan-guage suggested by Julie Grahamand others15- issocial class. I put it this way not to diminish theimportance of gender or race vis-a-visgentrificationnor as the result of some universal belief that 'classrules'. Nonetheless, in some ways the class dimen-sions of gentrificationare quite obvious and many ofthe more interesting researchquestions today focuson the way in whichgender relationsand racialdiffer-ences are constitutive of gentrification.I have beenfrustrated n my own efforts to theorize the connec-tions between gender and class in the context ofgentrification,but I findpersuasiveBondi's nsistenceon the reciprocity of gentrification and gender andthe depiction of gentrification as constitutive ofgender, and I find it an insightfulway of connectingclass and gender.l6It takes us mercifullybeyond themore static insistence that 'women' are somehow'involved'.

But let's go back to class as the point of entry, andlet's for a moment assume the priority of individualpreference. Now let us ask: who has the greatestpower to realize their preferences?Without in anyway denying the ability of even very poor people toexercise some extent of preference, I think it isobvious that in a capitalistsociety one's preferencesare more likely to be actualized,and one can affordgrander preferences, to the extent that one com-mands capital. We may regret that economics sostrongly affects one's ability to exercise preferences,but it would hardlybe prudentto deny it;preferenceis an inherently class question. The preference toinvest capital n, for example, innercity rehabilitationand redevelopment, in searchof profit, is a powerfulsocial force.Yet it is a social force which in the 1970swas barelyrecognized in the gentrification iterature.The point of the rentgap hypothesis was precisely totry and reveal the social bases, economic workingsand socio-spatial results of this class power in onespecific nstance; he rentgap is an expression of classpower within the urbanland market a class powerwhich while certainly not invincible, cannot simplybe denied via the ideological pretence of equality in

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cation in InnerLondon',Area 5: 252-261; WILLIAMS,P. (1976) 'The role of institutions in the InnerLondonhousing market: the case of Islington', Trans.Inst.Br.Geogr.N.S. 1: 72-82; 'Buildingsocieties and the innercity', Trans. nst. Br.Geogr.N.S. 3: 23-346. LEY,D. (1986) 'Alternative explanations for innercitygentrification:a Canadianreassessment',Ann.Ass. Am.Geogr.76: 521-5357. CLARK,E.(1988) 'The rent gap and transformationofthe built environment in Malmo 1860-1985', Geogra-fiska Annaler B 70: 241-254; see also CLARK(1987)The rentgap and urbanchange:case studies in Malmo1860-1985 (LundUniversity Press,Lund)8. SMITH,N. (1987) 'Of Yuppies andhousing:gentrifica-tion, social restructuringand the urbandream',Environ.Plan.D: Soc.Space5: 1659. SMITH (1979) op. cit., p. 54610. ROSE, D. (1984) 'Rethinking gentrification: beyondthe uneven development of marxist theory', Environ.Plan. D: Soc. Space2: 47-74; BEAUREGARD,R. A.(1984) 'Structure, gency, and urbanredevelopment', inSMITH,M. P.(ed)Cities ntransformation,ol. 26, UrbanAffairs and Annual Reviews (Sage, Beverly Hills)pp. 51-72; BEAUREGARD,R. A. (1986) 'The chaosand complexity of gentrification', in SMITH, N. andWILLIAMS,P. (eds) Thegentrification f thecity (AllenandUnwin, London),pp. 35-55; BEAUREGARD,R.A.(1991) 'Communitiesof accommodation, communitiesof desire: The differences of gentrification'. Un-published paper, School of Public and InternationalAffairs,University of Pittsburgh,PA 1526011. MUNT, I. (1987) 'Economicrestructuring,cultureandgentrification: a case study of Battersea, London',Environ.Plan.A. 19: 1175-97

12. WARDE, A. (1991) 'Gentrification as consumption:issues of classandgender',Environ.Plan.D:Soc.Space9:223-3213. CAULFIELD,J. (1989) ' Gentrification and desire',Canadian Rev. Socio. Anthro. 26: 617-632. See also

BEAUREGARD (1991). As BONDI (1991a: 195)argues of Caulfield, a Freudian,masculine subjectivitystalkshis appealto the desires of gentrifiersand the cityas theplace of our encounter with the other '14. BORDIEU, P. (1984) Distinction. A social critiqueofthe judgement of taste (Harvard University Press,Cambridge)15. GRAHAM, J. (1990) 'Theory and essentialism inmarxistgeography', Antipode22: 53-6616. BONDI (1991a; 1991b)

the treatment of all individuals as self-containedconsumers.An understanding of the social construction andexpression of preference is important for an under-standing of urbanchange, but it would be foolish toignore the deep ideological texture of this concept incontemporary capitalist culture. Hamnett now clearlybelieves that individual preferences are strongerthan the social powers of capital and the State ingentrification. I do not. Such a belief resonates, I think,with the middle class conceit that we all control ourown lives. New middle class 'yuppies' and the babyboom generation, from whom the 'gentrifiers' aremost commonly drawn, may indeed experience anunprecedented level of control over their own lives(closely related to their power to command capital)but it would be the blindest of all fallacies to trans-pose this privileged, class-specific self-justificationinto supposedly objective theory. A model ofurban geographical change stemming from such aprivileged perspective would, like its Chicago-basedpredecessor, be half wet.

NOTES1. SPIVAK, G. (1990) (Interview by Howard Winant)

'Gayatri Spivak on the politics of the subaltern',Soc.Rev. 20.3: 932. HAMNETT, C. (1991) 'The blind men and the

elephant:the explanation of gentrification', Trans. nst.Br. Geogr. N.S. 16: 173-189. All page referencesunaccompaniedby full citations are to this article3. BONDI, L. (1991a) 'Gender divisions and gentrifica-tion:a critique',Trans. nst. Br.Geogr.N.S. 16:190-198.See also BONDI, L.(1991b) 'Women, gender relationsandthe innercity', in KEITH,M. andROGERS,A. (eds)Hollow promises:rhetoricand reality in the inner city(Mansell, London)pp. 110-1264. HAMNETT, C. (1984) 'Gentrification and residentiallocation theory: a review and assessment', inHERBERT,D. T. and JOHNSTON, R. J. (eds) Geogra-phy and the urbanenvironment.Progressn research ndapplications, ol. 6 (JohnWiley, London),pp. 283-3195. SMITH,N. (1979) 'Toward a theory of gentrification:aback to the city movement by capital not people', J.Am. PlannersAssoc. 45: 538-548; HAMNETT, C.(1973) 'Improvementgrants as an indicator of gentrifi-

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smith n - blind man's buff, or hamnett's philosophical individualism in search of gentrification

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